Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community - conceptual and methodological clarifications

This paper discusses four problems. (1) Risk and class: why 'class' is too soft a category to capture the explosiveness of social inequality in World Risk Society? (2) Risk and crisis: how do these two concepts relate to each other? (3) Risk and hazards: by hazards I mean material substances that are sources of threat. (4) Risk and cosmopolitan community/solidarity: how do climate risks liberate politics from given rules and enemy images and/or produce new ones?

The author

Professor Ulrich Beck is Professor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and has been the British Journal of Sociology LSE Centennial Professor in the Department of Sociology since 1997. He has received Honorary Doctorates from several European universities. [January 2015] After he motivated the Chair "Cosmopolitan risk communities" at the Collège d'études mondiales during 3 years, Ulrich Beck passed away on the first of January 2015. Michel Wievorka paid homage to him in a text published on this website. (link : dans un texte publié sur ce site)

Reference

Ulrich Beck. Risk, class, crisis, hazards and cosmopolitan solidarity/risk community - conceptual and methodological clari cations. FMSH-WP-2013-31. 2013.